Don Gutteridge - Dubious Allegiance

At first he thought it might be a dead deer, trapped in the snow and starving. A brief afternoon flurry had obscured the edges of whatever it was, leaving only the brown oblong of an animal’s belly-or was it a cloth coat? He hurried up to it and began brushing the loose snow away. Animal or human, it was not moving. He ran his ungloved fingers across the exposed surface. It was cloth. Someone had crawled under a large woollen overcoat, or been left there. With a single thrust Marc pulled the coat up and tossed it aside. Below, encased in snow except where the coat had provided cover, lay a tiny human figure in homespun trousers, macintosh, and tuque, curled or clenched in the fetal position.

Gently, Marc rolled the body face up. It was a young woman. Her eyes were closed, and the skin on her cheeks cold. Marc placed two fingers to her throat. Nothing. He tried another spot and found a faint pulse. She was alive, barely.

To her credit the Widow Standish, as curious as any cat, asked no questions when Marc carried the half-frozen body of a young woman into her parlour and begged her to do whatever she could for her while he went in search of a doctor. However, by the time Dr. Angus Withers arrived an hour later, there was nothing for him to diagnose or treat. A series of increasingly warm baths had revived the patient and restored a healthy heartbeat. She had even taken a few tablespoons of chicken broth before falling into a recuperative sleep on the sofa near the fireplace in the parlour. Miraculously, the only frostbite was on each of her exposed cheeks and the tip of her nose. A pair of mukluks, fur mittens, and the tuque had protected the other extremities. Maisie had already administered the appropriate ointment.

“I don’t think she could have been in that snowbank for more than three or four hours,” the doctor opined at the door. “But contrary to popular opinion, snow can be a kind of insulation. They tell me the Esquimaux live comfortably in snow-houses.”

Marc thanked Angus and went into the living-room. There was something familiar about the woman, and he wanted to be present when she woke up. “I’ll keep watch, Mrs. Standish. You and Maisie have had enough nursing for one day.”

“Very well, sir,” the widow replied, not quite sure if she ought to leave a man as handsome as Marc alone in a room with a female creature of unknown pedigree. But her reverence for the tunic won out. “Maisie and me’ll just be next door.”

“She’ll need to be moved to one of your guest-rooms, ma’am. I’ll pay for her board.”

“You’re the only guest we got at the moment. There’s plenty of space.”

“Thank you. By the way, did she say anything to you while you were helping bring her back?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Mind you, her voice was pretty weak, but she did talk.”

“And?”

“We didn’t catch a word of it. It was pure gibberish!”

Marc had dozed off. Supper had come and gone, and still the stranger slept, breathing deeply, her youthful body very much concerned to restore itself whatever the rest of her might wish. Mrs. Standish and Maisie had gone to bed. When Marc awoke from his pleasant cat-nap, the clock in the corner said 9:35. The fire had died down, but its embers still radiated a glowing heat. Three candle-lamps provided ample illumination. Marc pulled his chair up beside the sofa and examined the countenance of the sleeper.

She had thick black hair that, when fluffed out, would cascade in waves about her diminutive, heart-shaped face and caress her shoulders. Her facial features were similarly tiny, but beautifully proportioned. Even with the paleness that must have been the consequence of her brush with death, her complexion was dark. Her eyes, when they chose to reveal themselves, would be dark as well.

What on earth had she been doing out there at the edge of town? Had he passed her unknowingly on his way out to the fort? From her clothing, now tucked safely away, it was clear she was not impoverished. Two shillings had been discovered in her coat pocket. She was well fed and healthy looking: a young female in her prime. Yet she had not accidentally tumbled into those drifts. Her coat had been deliberately removed-by her or someone else-and she had curled herself up under it. To rest? Or to die?

Without warning the eyelids fluttered up, and a pair of black eyes peeped out-surprised, puzzled, wary-but very much alive. Marc stared. The eyes he was scrutinizing, and beginning to recognize, likewise began to focus in on the face before them.

“Isabelle LaCroix, n’est-ce pas ?” he asked, hoping that his English-accented continental French would be understood.

Fear and astonishment contended in the look she gave him. “How do you know my name?” she asked in her own joual.

“Now we know each other’s name. It’s time, don’t you think?”

She hardly dared to take her gaze off him, but did manage to glance about once or twice. “How did I get in this place?”

“I found you in a snowbank.”

Tears overwhelmed her for several minutes. Marc offered her his handkerchief, which she refused with a curt nod. “What right had you to save me from what I wished to do?”

“I had no idea who you were when I put you into my sleigh and brought you here to my landlady’s house. It was Mrs. Standish and Maisie who brought you back to the living, not me.”

She looked down at Maisie’s flowered bathrobe. “I have no need to live.”

“I thought it was God’s prerogative to decide that sort of thing.”

She peered up through her tear-filled eyes and said, coldly, “There is no God.”

“I’ll make us some tea,” Marc said, starting to get up.

A small white hand shot out and grasped his wrist. “What do you intend to do with me?” she asked, suddenly afraid.

“You and I have unfinished business to discuss, haven’t we?”

As quickly as it had come, the fear vanished and was instantly replaced by a glint of the fire and the undiluted hatred she had flashed across the cabin just before the bullet struck his thigh.

“For example, why have you been trying to kill me?” he asked.

“You murdered my lover,” she said, spitting out the words.

“For that, I am truly sorry. I have been sorry every day since. But you know, as I do, that your lover had two pistols trained on me, one of which he fired while preparing to finish me off with the other.”

“You were going to burn down-” She didn’t complete the sentence. Her face crumpled. She dropped her head into her hands and wept.

Marc went to the kitchen, where Mrs. Standish had left a big kettle simmering on the wood-stove, and made tea. He filled two mugs and went back into the parlour.

Isabelle LaCroix had drawn her knees up and was resting her chin on them, with a woollen afghan wrapped around her legs. She had stopped crying. She took the mug of tea from Marc without looking at him, and sipped at it.

“I think it would be good for you if you just told me about it,” he said gently.

For a minute he thought she had decided to say nothing more, simply curl up inside herself as she had tried to do with her body in the snowbank. But after a while she started to talk, slowly and hesitantly at first, but soon with vigour and purpose. “My Pierre is dead, and I have ruined what was left of my life. In the cabin, I thought you were dead, too. If not, I would have done something terrible then and there. But his mama and I rushed over to him. You shot his voice away. He was trying to tell me he loved me, but you shot all the words away.”

“Tell me, please: did they burn down the house?”

The question seemed to startle her, interrupting the necessary flow of her own memories. “No,” she said. “They didn’t. I don’t know why. It’s still there. At least it was the day I left.”